Martin Henry, Contributor

VETERAN JOURNALIST, Earl Moxam recently published a series of articles in The Gleaner on his discussions in Scotland about the Scottish role in slavery and the need for apology and reparation. He subsequently interviewed for radio Scottish clergymen visiting Jamaica.

There is one Scottish-Jamaican family that does not need to apologise about involvement with slavery ,but which has made distinguished contributions to freedom in Jamaica. We tend to automatically connect Euro-Jamaicans with the era of slavery as the masters. But there was some post-emancipation migration of British people in search of opportunity in the colonies.

One such newcomer was John Pringle. Pringle was born in the Scottish Outer Hebrides in 1849, 11 years after 'Full Free' in 1838. Despite his relative poverty he was able to study medicine at the University of Glasgow. As a youth he earned money working as a gillie for rich sports fishermen coming to fish in the Outer Hebrides. Much like a golf caddy, a gillie, in Scottish terms, is a sportsman's attendant. One of Pringle's clients was a high-ranking member of the British Government. He encouraged the young medical student to do what others were doing and seek opportunity in the colonies, specifically Jamaica.

In fact, colonial Jamaica was actively recruiting investors from Britain. Some twenty odd years after Pringle's own arrival, the Institute of Jamaica put out the booklet, "Jamaica in 1895: A Handbook of Information for Intending Settlers and Others". The invitational handbook announced, "Jamaica offers numerous favourable openings for young men from Great Britain and other European countries with small capitals (say from £2,000 to £3,000) and some experience in farming, who wish to adopt an agricultural career."

John Pringle came some time in the early 1870s as a recently graduated medical doctor, but may have had farming on his mind. I am yet to locate any of his personal papers which may have survived. In 1875, the upwardly mobile young doctor married into the established Levy family with Jewish roots. His wife Amy was the daughter of Isaac Levy, a Custos of St Catherine. Getting his start from his father-in-law, Pringle gradually abandoned medicine for the business of land acquisition and farming. He became a member of the Legislative Council and was knighted.

At the time of his death in 1925 he was reputedly the biggest landowner in Jamaica, owning over 50 properties across the island. These included his two homes, the Manor Park property in St Andrew and Cape Clear in St Mary. He also owned Laughing Waters, adjoining Dunn's River, where Doctor No was filmed and which is now a protocol house for the prime ministers of Jamaica. Sir John also owned Bromley in Walkerswood, St Ann, and it is his Bromley family which brought me in touch with his story.

Banana man

Sir John, himself a banana man, was instrumental in his old age in the organisation of banana farmers to challenge the unfair pricing practices of the big fruit companies trading in Jamaica. This resulted in the establishment of the Jamaica Banana Producers Association not long after his death.

Among Sir John's five children was Minnie [married Simson] to whom he bequeathed Bromley along with Roaring River and Laughing Waters. Bromley, under Miss Minnie's ownership, became an important centre for Moral Rearmament (MRA) in Jamaica, for social and political activism and a base for some of the earliest community development activities of the Norman Manley-led Jamaica Welfare Limited (JWL). But those strands of the story, all of which I discovered while researching the history of community development in Walkerswood, will have to be picked up another time. One key monument of that development story is the company, Walkerswood Caribbean Foods.

Miss Minnie inherited a strong sense of social justice rooted in Fabian Socialism from her father Sir John Pringle. Considering his own origins and background, the relationship with workers on the Pringle properties and in the Pringle household was different from the old plantocracy, less authoritarian and less class conscious. Former Governor General and a founding member of the People's National Party (PNP), Sir Howard Cooke, who got to know Miss Minnie and Bromley quite well through MRA, attests that Sir John's daughter was very different from the white Jamaicans he had been angry against in his race and class-conscious youth.

Sir John's outlook extended to assisting Marcus Garvey in his programme of Black upliftment. Garvey tells us in his autobiographical sketch that he founded the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) in July 1914 "with the programme of uniting all the Negro peoples of the world into one great body to establish a country and Government absolutely their own."

"I had a large number of white friends, who encouraged and helped me," he wrote. Among these white friends was Sir John Pringle. "I succeeded to a great extent in establishing the Association in Jamaica," Garvey recorded, "with the assistance of a Catholic Bishop, the Governor, Sir John Pringle, the Rev Willie Grant, a Scottish clergyman, and several other white friends."

As a young woman, and through her family connections, Minnie Pringle met and developed a warm friendship with Sir Sydney Olivier who was colonial Governor between 1907 and 1913. Sir Sydney took office in May 1907, four months after the January 14 earthquake which had devastated the brick-built city of Kingston.

Social change

In between his busy activities as Governor of a colony recovering from a devastating earthquake and hit by a strong destructive hurricane in 1912, Sir Sydney hunted wild turkeys in the company of the young Minnie and others and visited Bromley. His strong views on Fabian Socialism influenced Minnie in her development of a vision of social change and development for community and country.

Minnie Pringle married Scottish soldier Col James "Jim" Simson in 1913 but was widowed by the First World War as the young mother of a single daughter. Her grandson, Rhoderick Edwards is the Chairman of Walkerswood Caribbean Foods.

Miss Minnie used Bromley to back Jamaica Welfare and its programme of community development. She certainly was a wealthy friend of Norman Manley's, both bonded by Fabian socialist and community development ideals. JWL's first co-operative farm emerged out of Bromley/Walkerswood. But that too is a story for another time. Several members of the Pringle clan have served in high offices in the PNP administrations and in the Public Service.